Augmented reality app keeps libraries tidy

Libraries may be cathedrals of knowledge, but their custodians have the distinctly earthly task of keeping all those books in order.

Now Bo Brinkman, a computer scientist at Miami University has developed an augmented reality (AR) app which he hopes can facilitate and speed up the job of finding misplaced books and returning them to their rightful place. The app, called ShelvAR, scans a dozen book spines at once and detects errant titles. Viewing the shelf through a tablet PC, the user sees incorrectly filed books highlighted, and on-screen arrows point to their correct place on the shelf.

Eventually the software, written by undergraduate research assistant Matt Hodges, should be available as a downloadable app for any library volunteer to use.

Currently the ShelvAR system requires machine-readable stickers to be placed on books, which isn't ideal when collections can easily stretch to hundreds of thousands of titles. The success of ShelvAR will depend on whether librarians consider the cost of labelling all their titles to be offset by the time and money saved in crawling through miles of shelf in the hunt for misplaced books.

Physical books are becoming obsolete. This AR app might be better for fulfillment centers, but they can use RFID, QR codes or other cheaper, existing technology that's less of a software burden than AR

Marij Sak
on April 22, 2011 8:39 PM

Why? Very clever, but more time consuming than scanning the shelves and putting in order, as wel as getting to know the stock at the same time. However, I can see a use for it for students and borrowers helpfully replacing books.

AprilHare
on April 23, 2011 5:47 AM

All sorts of ways this can fall down:
- What if the item is too thin for a sticker?
- What if the item is upside down or otherwise in the wrong orientation?
- What if stickers get damaged or torn off?

Jurry
on April 23, 2011 10:02 AM

Why go trough the trouble of having the computer 'read' a sticker? Stick an RFID tag inside the book and your're done.

Peter
on April 23, 2011 8:09 PM

Neat idea, but I'll wait till the software can read the titles directly.

Carolina Librarian
on April 23, 2011 8:17 PM

Two things:
1. If this can work for LC, it can be tweaked to work for DDC, also, yes?
2. If you could design an app that works off previously existing RFID tags, I think libraries would be more open to its deployment. It begins to get annoying having to re-tag the same books over and over for every new enhancement that comes along.

Malvolio
on April 23, 2011 9:35 PM

This seems kind of silly. The book is already "tagged": it has the name and author written on the spine. OCR isn't perfect but it's certainly good enough for this.

Andrea
on April 23, 2011 9:37 PM

Doesn't every library use machine readable labels these days?

Our library has a handheld scanner that works with our catalog database. But the scanner costs about $1500 & can be purchased only from the company that sells the database software. Super useful device, but we can't afford more. This app, if it can work with a variety of smart phones, sounds great.

David Aitken
on April 24, 2011 4:28 AM

Libraries are broke. They have no money to relabel the books and taxpayers are unlikely to increase taxes so they can. Many libraries use volunteers to restock the shelves so their labor cost for this task is essentially zero. Many libraries have barcoded their books, so perhaps that technology could be used to properly locate items, but the barcode is frequently too large for the spine and usually placed on the front or back of the book, thus requiring removal from the shelf to read it.

Mark Harrison
on April 27, 2011 1:41 PM

I am amazed that this application requires books to be tagged.

Surely an application that knew what the shelf should look like, and could differentiate between:

- The correct book in place
- A gap
- The wrong book somewhere

... would be the 80:20 version - 80% of the usefulness, in that it tells you what's in the wrong place, but then relies on a human to work out where it should be instead... 20% of the implementation issue - buying the odd tablet, and taking "before" snapshots of the shelves isn't expensive compared to relabelling tens of thousands of books!